Boys track and field: NSC meet postponed after three events

Boys track and field athletes were ready to compete Thursday night at the North Suburban Conference meet hosted by Stevenson.

But Mother Nature just refused to cooperate as lightning, thunder, and rain early in the eight-team meet caused the meet to be postponed until Friday at 4 p.m. where they will pick up where they left off.

After taking first place at the Lake County meet last week, Libertyville's 4x800 team of Filip Vojvodic, Taylor Rihm, Trace Whildin, and Thomas Chudy won again in 8:13.18 to pick up 10 quick team points for the Wildcats.

With the sectional meet next Thursday at Grayslake Central, Libertyville is gearing up for a potential berth to the state meet by either finishing in the top two or meeting the cutoff time.

"We beat the teams that we needed to beat at county who are in our sectional and we did it again today so as long as we stay in the top two we're in, but I'm pretty confident we'll hit the time (7:59.23)," said Libertyville coach Stuart Mendelsohn. "We ran an 8:02 last week and we had a bad handoff so we're three seconds off. I told the kids to just go out and compete, and they held onto the lead and didn't give it up."

The defending NSC champion host Patriots also got off to a good start in the meet as senior Alex Moser (7.14 meters), and freshman Andrei Konstantinidis (7.11 meters) went 1-2 in the long jump.

"Moser broke his own school record and he also broke the NSC meet record which was from 1997 or 1998," said Stevenson coach Scott Sommers, who was concerned about uncertainty of the weather conditions. "There was a small window of opportunity to go and then we're going to get shut down again, and we're not going to be here until midnight not knowing what we're going to get."

Stevenson's Troy Valoaga was in second place in the discus competition with a throw of 52.31 meters while Mundelein junior Holden McFall held onto third place with a mark of 45.23 meters.

Lake Zurich coach Todd Anderson is optimistic that his squad can come back tomorrow and put together a strong performance top to bottom.

"If we paused again we couldn't get out there until 7:20 and then start at around 7:50 after warming up," said Anderson, whose team placed second in the 4x800 in 8:24.59. "So we'll get back out here and start clean tomorrow when hopefully the weather is much better."